WHAT IS A COMET ?

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 137, 11 February 1859, Page 3

WHAT IS A COMET ?

{From the Times.)

Astronomy in these days has become to most people a very cut and dried science. Sir Isaac Newton has told us all about it. There is the sun in the centre, and the planets revolve round it, as we see in the orreries. The grand discovery of gravitation starts with the fall of an apple and ends with it. The sun is a very large orange, the earth a crab-apple, and the moon a white currant. With a few trifling varieties, this explains the whole solar system. Ladies'maids understand it all, for it is far easier than needlework or clearstarching; and, though we have heard of one who owned herself beaten by the " possession " of the equinoxes, the whole school, from the nutation of the earth's axis to the discovery of the last planet. The mind contemplates a vast shadowy ■ order of revolving worlds, and is satisfied. The truth leaves so little to the imagination, it establishes so impassable a gulf between us and every other celestial body, that minds bred in the school of life and sentiment recoil from this, the cold certainty of solid spheres moving by iron laws. What have we to do with the planet Jupiter, or even our own moon ? Tell us, if you can, whether they are inhabited ; what like beings occupy them; how they live; and, if possible, open communication with them. What are they to us, or we to them ? Your discoveries only make matters worse. Desist, and let us imagine what science forbids us to believe. Meanwhile, thanks to the dull, able men, who, with their cold, piercing eyes and subtle algebra, have dissected this great puzzle; not'only have illusions vanished, but the very pageant of the visible heavens has lost its charm. « Who knows, or cares to know, the thousand spectacles that astronomer, shepherd, and sailor once watched and waited for ? The constellations, the heliacal settings of the chief stars, the planets, their onward and backward paths, the harvest moon, the Milky Way, now brilliant, now turbid, now in many streams, now in one, have become almost hidden lore to us, who know, as we think, the substance of which all these arc shadows. Happily for men of science themselves, to give a motive for further research, and to suggest something beyond a mere eternal order, the fact which they discover is ever in advance of the law which they know. As they scrutinize the vacant places of our own system, or project ■their gaze deeper and deeper into the infinite, they encounter a strange caprice, a wild variety, shapes as fanciful as those of Flora's own devising, mysterious movements, and the traces of terrible catastrophes. We see stellar systems, or rather universes, exceeding all our notions of magnitude in the eccentric shape of ringlets, horses' tails, dumb-bells, crowns, discs, and sickles. In our own system, where an eternal lawhad seemed to prescribe certain planets at certain distances, that law has been found to have been rudely interrupted by the explosion of one globe into fifty smaller ones. Even the sun itself suggests the hope, or the fear, of changes, affecting its own structure, and the condition of every planet that basks in its rays; We have,then, a celestial history as well as order; events as well.as method. In the visible heavens around us there is not only an eternal present; there is a past, and there is a future. But of all these changes and events, portentous yet welcome, there is none so historical, so fearful, or that so bespeaks a still creative hand, as those wondrous visitors, one of whom is to-night, as they tell us, at its brightest and nearest. We all speak glibly of dimensions, and distances, and velocities; t>ut as Ariel or Puck is to slow mortal man, so is this heavenly sprite to the vulgar rank of planets. As he has been seen for several nights past, with his head in the latitude of Arcturus, vertical to Jamaica or Bombay, he has flung a stream of-light to a latitude vertical to the northern part of this island. Even in this hazy atmosphere the spectre has been traced to a length of 40 degrees, which, taking distance and angles into account, cannot stand for less than 50,000,000 of miles. But when we ask who and what this is,— what is his substance, his work, and his law, all are at fault. Astronomers, new and old, materialists and mysticists, mathematicians and nurserymaids, medieval' sign-mongers and modern philosophers, are all reduced to one rabble of guessers. When they have made head and tail of it their discoveries come to a standstill. What is a comet ? By numerous tests it has been found impossible to detect any weight in it sufficient to affect the motions of a planet or a.satellite. But for this we should- have our own year,;frequently lengthened and shortened to such an extent as to throw all ouv chronology out of gear, and supersede the almanac as much as a dissolution does our

Parliamentary Companion. Our shadowy visitors themselves pay the profbimdest homage to our superior gravity; they bow to this planet, they linger for that; they'hasten to another; with a series of weak compliances, they change their speed, their orbits, even their winter quarters in the extra-solar heavens. But .ill the time, in our dull material pride, we budge not one inch of our state or our progress for these charlatans of space. Yet the nucleus must have gravity, for how else would it gravitate or retain hold of its tail, if, indeed, it does ? Is the tail solid or hollow ? Is there any portion of it-dense enough to shut out the light of the smallest telescopic star? Even that is doubtful. Yet the bulk of the head itself is sometimes immense—a million of miles across. As for thu tail, it defies all theory of gravitation, of light, or of heat. Is it a flame? Is it smoke ? Is it steam ? Is it a bubble ? Is the whole affair a balloon, of which tho nucleus is the car? Does thai stream of light shoot out, as they tell us, at the rate of ton millions of miles a-day, return to the parent stock, or ii it left behind ? Does it precipitate itself, as some say, back again;6;n the outward-bound nucletis? Is it a more illusion ? We hear a'good deal of the heavenly architecture and celestial mechanism. Is it compatible with our notions on these points that a column of imponderable matter fifty millions of miles high should move through space, entire and undispersed, at the rate of two or three millions of miles a-day ? Tiie Comet of 1843, the most wonderful on record, whisked round the sun, close to it, at such a rate that its tail, a million of miles long, described in two hours the half of an orbit equal to the earth's. Supposing the tail to have held together dining thjs process, the extremity of it went over as tmu&h space in two hours as we do in half a year, travelling at the rate of about three millions of miles in one minute. As this staggere all belief, we must conclude that a good deal of the tail was left behind, brushed off in tether, if seiner there be, while the tail itself was continually restored during those wondrous two hours by fresh issues from the nucleus, which, however, to do that work would have to do the somewhat less speed of one hundred millions of .miles in two hours, or about one million of miles in a minute. Can anybody now ■pretend that there is nothing to be learnt, nothing more to be discovered in the skies? It is stated that the periods of two hundred comets have been calculated, which looks rather like a step towards reducing these vagrants to order and civilization. But there is almost always a hitch as to the actual return of a considerable comet. Either it does not come at all, or it comes so overdue that people hesitate to acknowledge it, or when it comes just at the very nick of time'it has changed its character so much that its own prophet, after a most solemn announcement, is afraid to recognise his protege. For a long time it might be said there was no comet in the sky. Except the tail of that of 1843, seen by a few fortunate observers, we have had none of any importance since 1811. So now is the time to attack this wondrous problem. Whatjs a Comet ? Doe 3 it come to drown us in a deluge, to shroud'us in blight, to sadden us with fog, to quicken us with fresh oxygen, or to burn us with "lire?

" Be thou spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from Heaven, or blasts from Hell Be, thy intents wicked or charitable ?'

We trust science will set to work to question, the nature and office of these fair apparitions. "We cannot willingly believe harm of them. Ten yards of low earth mist would utterly extinguish the twinkle of any star in the firmanent, yet on Tuesday night. Aroturus glittered through a million miles of Comet tail, not only with no reduction of his brilliancy, hut with a marked increase, and with bright prismatic hues. What if wo were to be involved for a few minutes, or hours, in so pure an atmosphere ! Our only fear is that it'would never be able to penetrate through this thick overcoat of coarse terrene atmosphere. Possibly, however, we may have to add to our scientific facts a brush or two from the tail of a comet. Venus, on the 17th of this month, will have a narrow escape from the embraces of this celestial visitor. Had he come five days earlier he Would have rushed straight into her arms. What a warm admirer for a virgin planet! The astronomers talk in their usual positive tone as to,our security from this danger, and tell us the oddsare we forget how many millions to one against it. On the other hand, they compute the number of comets in our system at several millions. To vulgar apprehension the chance of a collision with five million tails, averaging fifty millions of miles, dancing all sorts of pirouettes within the contracted space of the earth's orbit, doe 3 not seem so slight. We rather put our security in the fact that we have come to no harm yet hy these mysterious visitations. He Avho made this beauteous earth, who made sun and moon, made comets also, and made them for our good— not our ill.

Fkencii and English at Cherbourg.—A gentleman from Bristol, who was one of the visitors to Cherbourg, gives some instances of the fraternization between the French and English on the la'e brilliant occasion. The cafes were in the evening always full to overflowing, and always numbers (such was the disproportion between accommodation and visitors) crowded round the doors waiting for others to go out, in order to make room for them to enter; a seat was a luxury not always to be enjoyed, so numbers stood round against the walls with cups and glasses in their hands. At intervals up started some Frenchman or Englishman to propose complimentary toasts to the respective nations; fraternization and felicitations were the order of the day. John Bull drank to the Emperor, and Johnny. Crapaud to the Queer. One niglit (about one o'clock) when the festivites had been going on warmly for some time,' a Frenchman rose in a cafe where our friend was, and which was crowded with Gauls and English: —"Messieurs gentlemen," said the spokesman, "I do rise, Ido do drink, bois, to the very good health of the very good Q,ueen of England—vo vill sing the song that the Anglais do sing to the health of her Majeste— . •

" For he's da jolly goo.l fella, For he's de jolly good fella, Which nobody can clenv."

Not a little amused at this rollicking ditty being mistaken for the grave National Anthem, the English joined their French brethren in the chorus which swelled and roared like a hurricane, until wild with enthusiasm, the Frenchi rushed into the streets and hand in hand went singing "jollr good fellow" along the main thoroughfare, until they caught the sound of other voices approaching from the opposite direction. When the two musical bodies came nearer, our iufortfilant could hardly believe his ears or his eyes to find the new comers were French marines, whom a.lot"of young English yachtsmen had been fraternising withj and who, by the diligent instruction of the latter, were busily singing the air, without being at all conscious of what the words meant, of •' Rule Britannia." Just fancy French seamen singing and praying for the supremacy of England upon the seas. Indeed the sight of the English yachts in the harbor was the finest sight of all; it shewed what hundreds of thousands of pounds young Englishmen of fortune were expending in the favorite aquatic pleasure of the bold islanders.

The Bay after the Fol,l. —James A. Jones, of Ouacluta, in Arkansas, a. defeated candidate at.a recent election of a member of Congress, has published an address, in which he says:—"We evidently cast our pearls before swine. We magnanimously, and at a considerable sacrifice of our habitual self-respect, offered to serve a people who had no appreciation of the offering. We can't help it. We did'nt make the people, and we are not under contract to supply them with brains. If they were .wilfully blind lo our merit, the fault is theirs. We did our duty, and our conscience is easy."

A Sharp Apprentice.—" William," said a carpenter to his apprentice, "As I shall be absent to-day, I wish you to grind all the tools." "Yes, sir." Tile carpenter came home at night..' "William, have you ground all the; tools'?-—" All but tho handsaw," said Bill, "1 couldn't get quite all the gans out of that,"